























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































* • 

0 » • 


/ 








Resettlement Administration photo 







W E HAVE wasted our land 
recklessly in the past. In floods and dust storms, in 
higher taxes and human suffering, we are all paying 
the price today. 


The individual men who committed this waste did 
so ignorantly, not willfully. They followed the ex¬ 
ample of others, an example on which society as a 
whole had set its approval. Our riches were without 
limit, they thought. Let each man take what lies 
within his reach. 


Harsh experience has dispelled this pleasant indif¬ 
ference. We have learned that our land, as well as 
our forests and minerals, must be conserved. We 
have learned that this is a group, not an individual, 
problem. 

The Administration recognizes that the conservation 
of land is a primary duty of the Federal and State 
Governments. It recognizes that the people who de¬ 
pend upon the land are entitled to better social and 
economic benefits therefrom. The purpose of this 
booklet is to describe what one governmental agency, 
the Resettlement Administration, is doing to preserve 
the riches of America’s land for the America that is 
to come. 

R. G. Tugwell, Administrator. 


LIBRARY Of CONGRESS 


JUL 2 7 1933 






RESETTLEMENT 

ADMINISTRATION 


WASHINGTON, D. C., 1936 






Resettlement Administration photc 


IMPROPER LAND USE Soil is washing oft this hillside from which the trees were unwisely cleared. 


SOIL DESTRUCTION One consequence of continued misuse of land. 

Resettlement Administration photo 








1 * THE SETTING 


AMERICA’S LAND 

When the first colonists landed at Jamestown in 1607, they 
fell heir to one ol the richest lands in the world. Its fertile 
soil gave them the opportunity to achieve individual economic 
independence and on this basis to found a new system of 
political liberty. A great forest extended from the Atlantic to 
the Mississippi. Beyond the great river lay the prairie where 
centuries of growing grass had built up rich black earth. Then 
came the drier area which we know as the Great Plains, and 
finally the Rocky Mountain region with its forests and vast 
stores of mineral wealth. 

Soil, grass, timber, and minerals—these have been the ele¬ 
ments of America’s land, upon which has been built the great 
economic structure of the modern United States. 

OUR LAND TODAY 

During three centuries, several hundred million people have 
wrested a living from 2 billion acres that comprise America’s 
land. 

To make way for the spread of farms and cities from the 
eastern seaboard to the west, almost half of the original forest 
area has been cleared. Corn, cotton, tobacco, and grains flour¬ 
ish where the timber once stood, and cattle graze on the old 
buffalo ranges. One of the richest farming regions in the 
world has grown up in the fertile valley of the Mississippi. 
Even the dry lands of the Great Plains have been put to use 
for wheat farming and cattle ranching, and irrigation has made 
the deserts blossom. 

Today about half of the total area of the United States, 
some 987,000,000 acres, is in farms. Of this farmland, about 
413,000,000 acres are in crops. The rest is taken up by pastures, 
woodland, and waste. 


1 


Then, there are 615,000,000 acres of land which are classed 
as forests or burned-over and cut-over areas. 

A third great subdivision is pasture, comprising chiefly the 
great stretches of dry range in the West. Some 329,000,000 
acres are included in this class. 

Cities, roads, playgrounds, small parks, and the like occupy 
53,000,000 acres, and 77,000,000 acres are considered worthless, 
being largely deserts, mountains, and swamps. 

These figures do not tell anything about the differences in 
the quality of the land. They do not distinguish, for example, 
between exhausted soil of the Piedmont district and the rich 
earth of Iowa. Obviously, these differences are of the greatest 
importance to an understanding of our present problems of 
land use and agriculture. 

A recent national survey showed that there were about 650,000 
farms, covering 100,000,000 acres, on which it is impossible to 
raise crops at a profit. This land, for various reasons, has 
proved too poor or insufficiently supplied by nature with water. 

Located on these farms are many of the 1,000,000 farm fami¬ 
lies who have been on the relief rolls. Many of these families 
have never been completely self-supporting. None of them 
can ever hope to be, so long as they depend on the cultiva¬ 
tion of unproductive farms. Their tragic status supports the 
contention that there have been mistakes in our use of the land 
in the past. 

Other types of land offer similar contrasts. The 615,000,000 
acres of forest land in the United States vary from small areas 
of virgin timber to the vast areas which have been devastated 
by forest fires and wasteful methods of lumbering. Productive 
forests, particularly those under such control as insures their 
conservative use, can support a large lumber and wood-using 
industry. But burned-over areas, blackened and charred by 
negligence and ruthless exploitation, have practically no eco¬ 
nomic value and can be made productive again only at a heavy 
expense. 


2 



PROBLEM AREAS The light sections indicate areas in which the 
unwise use of land has produced most serious consequences. These areas, 
however, also contain much good land in farms, forests, and pasture. 




Grass, like trees, also must be protected against misuse. 1 he 
cattle industry of the West depends on the grasslands tor pas¬ 
turage. Where the grassland has been protected, it has re¬ 
mained rich and productive. But hundreds of thousands ot 
acres have been overgrazed and today produce little but Rus¬ 
sian thistle and sage. Like unproductive farmland and cut¬ 
over forests, these ruined grasslands are a heavy burden on 
the Nation. 

THREE CENTURIES OF SETTLEMENT 

American history is built around the story of how the coun¬ 
try was settled and its resources exploited to human advantage. 
The good and evil of land use today can he traced to the way 
our 2 billion acres were used, and abused, in the past. 

Centuries of working their limited farm land had taught the 
peasants of Europe to conserve soil and forests. The first col¬ 
onists brought this knowledge with them to the New World. 
But, faced with an abundance of land such as they had never 
known, they soon lost their interest in the wise principles of 
agriculture and forestry. 

When land which produced bountiful yields of tobacco be¬ 
came exhausted through lack of proper care, the owners moved 
to fresh fields, leaving the old to be reclaimed by the wilderness. 
By the end of the seventeenth century the pressure of exhausted 
land was already felt in Virginia and Maryland. In another 
century the need for new land became desperate. The great 
plantation owners joined the small independent farmers in de¬ 
manding that the West be opened to settlement. The English 
refusal to comply with this demand was one of the causes of 
the Revolutionary War. 

After the Revolution the land west of the Alleghenies was 
opened and the second great period of settlement was begun. 
Frontiersmen wound their way through mountain gaps, settled 
in the heavily timbered lands beyond, and began to clear the 
forests. 


4 


VAST FORESTS A source of livelihood for millions of Americans. 

U. S. Forest Service photc 






























They were followed by thousands of farmers and their fam¬ 
ilies who took up land in the fertile Ohio Valley. As the move¬ 
ment to the west continued, laws were enacted to make it easy 
for an individual farmer to acquire a home on the public lands. 
Eventually, the demands of the land-hungry pioneers were met 
by the Homestead Act of 1862. This law permitted any head of 
a family to settle, free of charge, on 160 acres of public land. 
On the basis of these liberal provisions the area west of the 
Missouri River was settled. This was the third great period of 
settlement, which ended in the early twentieth century. 

A last great movement onto public land took place within 
recent years. Under the pressure of inflated war-time prices 
for grain, new machines were invented that permitted success¬ 
ful large-scale cultivation of wheat on lands too dry for other 
types of farming. During the years following the war, the tide 
of settlement flowed with increasing volume into the arid 
plains, even though wheat prices began to tumble rapidly. 
Like the whole story of which it was a chapter, the settlement 
of dry lands during the 1920’s had both good and bad results. 
Good land, where there was sufficient rainfall, produced pros¬ 
perous farms. On land where the soil was poor or rainfall 
insufficient, the new farmers failed; their hopes were shattered 
lastly by the great drought of 1934-35. 

Our century-long struggle with the wilderness has determined 
the American attitude toward natural resources. To our fore¬ 
fathers the idea that some day there might not be enough land 
for everyone seemed absurd. They felt that “there will be land 
for the hundredth and the thousandth generation.” To the 
homesteaders the forest was a bitter enemy. It had to be de¬ 
stroyed before they could work the farms which would make 
them independent and comfortable. They believed the land 
and forests to be endless. 

We are at last aware not only of the economic losses brought 
about by the destruction of our land but also of the heavy 

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4* 


BLACK BLIZZARDS Du st storms, encouraged by overgrazing and unwise 
cultivation of dry soil, have spread ruin over millions of acres of good land. 


Ed Applegate, Jr. 


















human costs—the poverty and despair—entailed by the settle¬ 
ment of poor land, by the exhaustion of soil, and by the deple¬ 
tion of forests. Today, the entire nation is burdened with the 
economic and social consequences of the careless conquerors of 
the country’s land. 


2* THE PROBLEM 


THE MISUSE OF AMERICA’S LAND 

In the spring of 1934 great dust storms swept over the West. 
Where a few weeks before the first green shoots of July wheat 
had covered the plains, there remained only acres of desert. 
People died of dust-pneumonia, suffocation, and lung hemor¬ 
rhages induced by the dust-laden air. A grim message of this 
disaster was brought to the East when in May, soil, carried by 
the wind 1,500 miles, blotted out the sun in cities along the 
Atlantic coast. 

These dust storms had been a serious problem in the West 
before 1934. Beginning in 1931, they had become increasingly 
severe in the following years. In 1933 and 1934 they destroyed 
4 million acres of western land and seriously damaged 60 mil¬ 
lion more. The great drought of 1934 only intensified their 
devastating effects, serving to bring them to the attention of 
the whole country. 

That the dust storms were national catastrophes, that all 
suffered to some extent from the distress and waste they caused, 
is readily admitted. It may be comforting to think of them as 
unavoidable “acts of nature.” But the sober truth is that their 
evil effects could have been largely prevented if the people had 
taken the right steps in time. 

The areas devastated by the dust storms were originally 
grassland where great herds of buffalo grazed. Then the first 


8 



settlers came and the buffalo gave way to cattle on the open 
range. Later, when the era of the cowboy had passed, the 
land was taken up by homesteaders who converted it to crop 
farming. The grass, whose roots had held the topsoil in place, 
was plowed under. This was a vital mistake, for when drought 
took the moisture out of the soil, there was nothing to hold 
the soil down and the wind blew it away in clouds of dust. 
This land, tit only for grazing, never should have been farmed. 

WASTED DOLLARS 

Misused land, dramatically illustrated by the wide-sweeping 
dust clouds, is costly. It affects the pocketbook of every Ameri¬ 
can. It places a needless burden upon whole communities. 

Unproductive land, or as it is sometimes called, submarginal 
land, is economically expensive. Farmers living on such land 
find it impossible to support themselves. Obviously, they can 
pay no taxes. Nevertheless, the local authorities must provide 
roads, schools, and, in most cases, some form of poor-relief. 
Such essential services have brought some county governments 
in the cut-over forest sections of the Lake States to the point of 
bankruptcy. 

In certain counties of one of these States a study of this prob¬ 
lem was made. In one county it was found that 28 families 
stranded on isolated, unproductive farms cost the local govern¬ 
ment an average of $185 a year each merely for the transporta¬ 
tion of their children to and from school. The cost of school 
maintenance is not included in this sum. The same families 
paid an average annual tax of $10.80 a year. This means that 
the other taxpayers of the county had to subsidize the residence 
of these people at a rate of more than $5,000 a year. 

In another case the county had to spend $90.80 for each of 
several families merely to keep open the roads leading to their 
isolated dwellings. This cost amounted to 13 times the total tax 
paid by these families. 


9 


AFTERMATH Livestock and crops destroyed, homes deserted, the land devastated. 

Resettlement Administration photo 


















A striking example ot excessive costs due to settlement on 
poor land may be found in three counties of a State in the 
Great Plains region. Continued drought has made the land use¬ 
less tor farming in large parts of these counties. At first the 
poverty-stricken families were cared for by the county. When 
the burden became too heavy, outside agencies extended their 
help. 1 he Red Cross brought food and clothing and medical 
aid. Emergency feed and crop loans were made to the farmers 
by the Federal Government. The Reconstruction Finance Cor¬ 
poration tried to help the large farm organizations while the 
Federal Emergency Relief prevented starvation when other 
means failed. 

It is estimated that since 1930, approximately $7,000,000 has 
been spent in this manner in these three counties. The money 
has not been spent in any constructive way. It has merely 
kept the people alive in their hopeless struggle against over¬ 
whelming natural forces. Lack of rainfall makes the land 
unfit for crop farming. Grazing is the sole use to which the 
physical qualities of the land suit it. The only permanent 
solution is to turn this district into a cattle range. 

HUMAN COSTS 

Higher taxes are the immediate dollars-and-cents cost of 
the misuse of land. There are other costs in suffering and 
social decay that are far more serious and abiding. 

To put it one way: In 1930 almost 1,000,000 farm families— 
15 percent of the total number—received an income per family 
of less than $400. This does not mean $400 in cash. It includes 
the value of all products of the farm, whether sold or consumed 
at home. 

These are cold figures. They do not give one a real under¬ 
standing of the condition of these 5 millions of our people. 
The shacks they live in rival the worst slums of the big cities. 
Grinding poverty takes its heavy toll in disease and ignorance. 


11 


This does not square with the American idea of the free and 
independent farmer. 

These conditions are not the product of a single cause. Cer¬ 
tainly it is unfair to put the blame solely on the individuals 
themselves. “Go west, young man” has for generations been 
the national formula for achieving economic independence. 
There was no way the people who followed this advice could 
discover what land was unfit for farming. We see today the 
results of their unavoidable mistakes. Nor can the farmers 
who exhausted good land hy wasteful methods of cultivation 
be entirely condemned. Only comparatively recently has re¬ 
liable information about agriculture been made available to 
everyone. 

However land abuse may have occurred, the farming of poor 
land is one of the chief causes of rural poverty today. The 
million poor farm families live for the most part in what are 
called “problem” areas. In these areas, the forests have been 
cut over, or erosion has washed away the fertile topsoil, or the 
land has been exhausted, or rainfall is insufficient. Successful 
farming is a physical impossibility. When attempted, the costs, 
human and financial, are heavy. The whole nation has an in¬ 
terest in seeing that this be changed. 

“TESTIMONIALS TO FOLLY” 

Poverty, distress, unnecessary taxes, these we all understand 
and want to eliminate. Yet, if our efforts to do so are to be 
successful, we must end misuse of the land. Poor land must be 
used in a way that is profitable for the present and the future. 
That is, in the fullest sense, it must be conserved. 

Why cannot this land be farmed? If it cannot be farmed, 
what can it be used for? These are the questions the land 
conservationist must answer. 

In some cases, of course, the land never has been, and never 
can be, farmed successfully. In most of the cut-over forest 
areas, for example, no treatment of the land can make crop 
farming profitable. In other cases, the soil was originally fer¬ 
tile but has been exhausted or has eroded away. Land of these 


12 



FLOOD Another tragedy following unwise use of land. 










two types can often be used for forestry. In this way it can be 
made to yield a profit. At the same time it can be made to serve 
in aid of flood control and to provide a refuge tor wild game as 
well as a place for camping and recreation. 

In general, however, the question of whether any particular 
land is capable of supporting farm families of normal ability 
is dependent upon three factors—soil, topography, and climate. 

Improper farming practices account to some extent for deple¬ 
tion of the soil; but erosion, which in a number of cases has been 
induced by improper farming practices, is regarded as its arch 
enemy. Of course a certain amount of erosion is inevitable. 
The rapidity with which our land has been wasted in this man¬ 


ner is, however, attributable to human faults. 

The great dust storms showed what ruin could be caused by 
wind erosion. The cost of erosion by water is still greater. In 
the Great Valley drained by the Missouri, Ohio, and Mississippi 
rivers, for example, 25 percent of the tilled lands have been 
stripped to the subsoil. 

The Mississippi Valley Committee, which estimates the loss 
caused by erosion in this region at kOO million dollars every 
year, gives this apt description in its report: 

“Once smiling regions become a desolate testimonial to man’s 
folly.” . • 

Topography also has much to do with the success or failure 
of farming. Rough topography imposes a severe handicap 
upon farmers. Steep slopes do not encourage the use of ma¬ 
chinery which can be profitably utilized on level lands. While 
steep slopes therefore discourage extensive farming, they do, 
however, encourage erosion of the soil. In many parts of the 
Southern Appalachian Mountains, the top layer of earth, in 
which are found the elements of productivity, washes away 
so quickly from the sloping fields that the rich soil becomes 
unproductive 3 or 4 years after it has been cleared and plowed. 

Climate is chiefly a problem in the western Great Plains. 
Insufficient rainfall frequently makes farming impractical. In 
these areas, however, pasture grasses, suitable for grazing, will 
grow where grains will not. Attempts at farming throughout 


14 





Resettlement Administration photo 


REFUGEES Thousands of families, evicted by land impover¬ 
ishment, have taken to the road in search of a chance to live. 







the drier sections of the Plains have thrown thousands of 
farm families on the relief rolls. 

Human distress, higher taxes, destruction of fertile soil 
these are the costs of the misuse of land. Certainly this is not 
a problem to be taken lightly. 


3* THE REMEDY 


THE FEDERAL LAND USE PROGRAM 

The story of the spoliation of our forests and minerals has 
become common knowledge since, a generation ago, Theodore 
Roosevelt and Giff ord Pinchot launched the first major drive to 
conserve our natural resources. 

It became recognized that the conservation of natural re¬ 
sources was an equally important duty of the Federal and State 
Governments. 

But it was not until 1933 that the first steps actually were 
undertaken to revise basically the national land policy of the 
United States, not only to conserve soil, but also—and this is a 
matter of great importance—to effect a proper readjustment 
of land and population. Human lives and communities whose 
economy depended upon land resources became a vital concern 
of government. 

In September 1933, the Soil Conservation Service was estab¬ 
lished to check the process of erosion by wind and water. In 
the next year the National Resources Board made a special 
analysis of the land problem and of the Mississippi Valley as a 
whole. 

In 1934 a program of rural rehabilitation was started to help 
farmers on relief, who had good land, to become self-support¬ 
ing. Agricultural experts advised them on methods of farming, 
and small loans were advanced to enable them to buy seed and 
implements. 


16 






J. S. Forest Service photo 


DEVASTATION 


With timber gone and soil going, the land lies barren and unused 


INSECURITY 


Ghost town, abandoned when forest resources were exhausted by unwise exploitation. 


U. S. Forest Service photc 







At the same time, Congress felt it was necessary to prevent 
further settlement on unproductive land. The Taylor Act of 
1934 closed the unappropriated public domain to further home¬ 
steading and provided for the organization of grazing districts 
out of suitable public lands. 

THE LAND PROGRAM 

The greatest task was to remedy the mistakes that had al¬ 
ready been made. Certain areas where both the land and the 
people who drew their living from it had suffered severely were 
first selected. It was proposed to turn these areas into forests, 
grassland, game preserves, or whatever they were by nature 
best fitted to be, and to provide for the people who had fruit¬ 
lessly attempted to wrest a living from these “dead” acres. 

In the beginning, this work was carried on by the land pro¬ 
gram of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The 
Agricultural Adjustment Administration cooperated and pro¬ 
vided experts from its Land Policy Section who directed the 
work in various regions. On May 1, 1935, the land program 
was transferred by Executive order to the Resettlement Ad¬ 
ministration. It is now organized as the Division of Land 
Utilization under the direction of Dr. L. C. Gray who has di¬ 
rected the land policy work of the United States Department of 
Agriculture for 17 years. 

The Resettlement Administration is purchasing 9 million 
acres of land. To carry out its program, $46,000,000 has been 
made available to the Division of Land Utilization which will 
also direct the work of improving the land. To finance the 
cost of converting these areas to their new uses, the President 
has allocated $18,000,000, a sum which is providing employment 
for 55,000 men. 

This program is divided into 209 different projects varying 
in size and purpose. Some of the tracts being improved cover 
only 35 acres and are to be converted into wayside picnic 
grounds. Others, the largest of which, located in the western 
plains, contains 1 million acres, are to be converted into graz¬ 
ing lands. 


18 





mmm 


Resettlement Administration photo 


PRODUCTIVE USE Careful farming on good land, a means to real security. 


MISUSE Poverty is the chief consequence of farming poor land. 

ESETTLEMENT ADMINISTRATION PHOTO 









ibbes 

KBs 

















Wherever possible the land being purchased will be used for 
a combination of purposes, including forestry, recreation, and 
wildlife conservation. Other projects have been planned with 
one major use in mind, and may be classified as being intended 
primarily for (1) grazing, (2) recreation, (3) migratory water- 
fowl protection, and (4) Indian rehabilitation. 

RESETTLEMENT 

All families living on the farms being purchased will be given 
an opportunity to move to better land. There are at present 
16,800 families occupying the tracts selected for purchase. Of 
these about half will be able satisfactorily to effect their re¬ 
settlement on better land without help from the Government 
beyond the purchase of their present farms. 

The task of resettling the other 8,400 families has been under¬ 
taken by the Division of Rural Resettlement of the Resettlement 
Administration. The purchase of good land for the new farms 
is now under way. 

The plans for resettling these people will vary with local con¬ 
ditions and with their own wishes and abilities. Each family 
will be helped to acquire a farm which involves the smallest 
possible change in the way of life and type of farming to which 
it is accustomed. Some of these new farms will be in the county 
in which the family now lives. In other cases it will be neces¬ 
sary to move a greater distance in order to find suitable land. 

There are two kinds of resettlement projects, known as the 
community type and the infiltration type. 

In the first, the community project, a large tract of good land 
is divided into separate farms for the new settlers. The set¬ 
tlement of these new families in a new locality means that new 
schools and other services must be provided. This, also, is 
part of the work of the Division of Rural Resettlement. 

When it is not necessary to organize a new community the 
families are settled according to a second plan, that of the “in¬ 
filtration” project. In the infiltration projects the families are 
scattered through existing farm communities in small enough 


20 



Resettlement Administration photo 


EMPLOYMENT 55,000 men are at work increasing the public usefulness of poor land 
bought by the Resettlement Administration. Planting black locusts in North Carolina, 
making a park and forest out of poor land bought by the Resettlement Administration. 


Hardy pasture grasses fatten livestock and protect the soil from wind and rain 


GRAZING LAND 


Photo by Ralph Steiner 


* 3m § 


g :<• * 






If / 













numbers not to overburden local schools and other public 
services. 

These farms are being purchased by the Resettlement Ad¬ 
ministration and will be rented and in some cases sold, after 
a trial period, to the new settlers. The advice of agricultural 
experts will be offered to them through the Agricultural 
Extension Service. The aim is to give them all a chance 
to achieve economic independence and the self-respect and 
comfort corollary to it. 


REGROWTH IN THE MID¬ 
WEST: A FORESTRY PROJECT 


The Bean Blossom project in southern Indiana is an exam¬ 
ple of what is being done to remedy the misuse of land and 
to help the people who have suff ered from it. The land being 
improved is located in the southern part of the State in what 
was once a productive forest area. The soils of this region vary 
greatly in quality. Some tracts, if properly treated, can be 
successfully farmed, but much of the land is too poor for 
agriculture. 

People first came to Bean Blossom to work in the lumber 
camps, sawmills, and other enterprises which the forest sup¬ 
ported. Farming was only a side line. When the forest had 
been completely cut over, employment stopped. Many people 
migrated to the cities. Others left for the still available farm 
lands in the West. But a large number stayed on and tried to 
make a living by farming the poor land. To supplement their 
meager incomes, they cut down and sold the second-growth 
trees as soon as they were large enough for use as cordwood 
or railroad ties. During the depression more people came to 
the county hoping to support themselves by farming. 

Farming of such land has produced little but distress. In 
contrast to the farmers living on nearby good land, people in 


the Bean Blossom area are poor, badly housed, and often 
underfed. 

The land itself is fast losing what little fertility it had. Fields 
have been exhausted and abandoned to erosion by wind and 


22 



Resettlement Administration photo 


RURAL ZONING 


Regulations help keep this land in 


productive use. 


UNZONED Trees should grow on this rocky land which was unwisely cleared and now 
lies abandoned. It is situated across the road from the zoned area shown in preceding picture. 

Resettlement Administration photo 












water. Trees could be grown there. But the poverty of the 
inhabitants forces them to cut down the young trees as soon 
as they are worth anything. The people do not have the capital 
to turn the land to a profitable use. 

The poverty of individuals has burdened State and county. 
Schools and roads must he provided for communities which 
contribute little to the public revenue. This, just as much as 
relief, is an unnecessary drain on public resources. 

The present use of the land in the Bean Blossom area offers 
no hope for betterment in the future. Without help there is 
for these people no way out. They are not trained to work in 
factories and in the city there are not jobs enough as it is. 
They cannot, without money, move onto better land. To enable 
these people to do the work they know and prefer, to put this 
land to its best use in the interest of future generations, is a 
task which the Government alone can undertake. 

To remedy these evils in the Bean Blossom project, the Beset- 
tlement Administration is doing two things effectively. First, 
it is buying the poor land and reforesting it. Second, it is 
helping the farmers to move to better land. An obvious result 
will be to relieve State and county of heavy expenditures on 
schools, roads, and relief. 

On the purchased properties, trees will be planted, erosion 
will be checked and walks and camping places will be built. 
Wildlife and public recreation will be encouraged. The entire 
area will benefit by these improvements. Instead of poor farm 
land rapidly wasting away, there will be forest land of con¬ 
stantly growing value. The whole area will be turned over to 
the State of Indiana for administration along with other State- 
owned forest land nearby. 

GRASS IN THE WEST 

The project in the Milk Biver district in the plains of Montana 
is a similar venture. Settlers in this district have tried to use 
land for crop farming on which the soil is too dry to yield a 
marketable crop except in unusually wet years. As in southern 


24 


RESETTLEMENT A new home on good land means a new chance for a self-respecting life. 


Resettlement Administration photo 
























Indiana, the results have been poverty, tax delinquency, and 
excessive expense to local governments. Large relief payments 
and crop and feed loans in year after year of drought have 
brought no improvement. The simple fact is that this land 
cannot be farmed at a profit; the dust-burned homesteads of 
the farmers are permanent liabilities to the people who live 
on them and to the county, the State, and the Nation. 

The land cannot be farmed, but it is by nature well suited 
for grazing. However, the holdings of most of the present 
farmers, running from 320 to 640 acres, are far too small to be 
turned into ranches. The Resettlement Administration pro¬ 
poses to buy their land, join it with other tracts in this district 
which are owned by the Government and make of it all a large 
grazing range. Needless to say, as on all other projects, no one 
need sell if he chooses not to. 

Running through the center of this area is an irrigation project 
which still has land open to settlement. Some of the farmers 
who move from their dr}^ tracts will be helped to settle on this 
irrigated land where crop farming can he successfully carried 
on. Others will set up as stock raisers. They will have a small 
acreage of the irrigated land where they can grow winter feed 
for their cattle. The grazing area formed by their old farms 
and adjoining public lands will give them a place to run their 
cattle during the temperate months. 

Certain lands within the county will, of course, be continued 
in grain farming. Wherever crop cultivation has proved to be 
a success, no attempt is made to change the use of the land. 

This vast area devastated by drought and dust storms, which 
is today in large part a burden on the rest of the country, will 
become a profitable part of the national economy. 

FOR THE GENERAL WELFARE 

In the eastern part of the United States there are large hilly 
regions which in private ownership can be turned to no use that 
is profitable from a financial point of view. Steep hills, poor 
soil, valleys, and rushing streams make impossible farming but 
potentially beautiful parks. 


26 



Resettlement Administration photo 


.AND PROGRAM The Resettlement Administration buys out 
ioor farms, giving stranded families an opportunity to start again. 

RESTORED Poor farm land is converted into productive forests, recreation and 
wildlife areas. The farm land on which is situated the farmhouse in the upper 
picture will be a part of the Brown County forest area shown in lower photo. 


^SETTLEMENT ADMINISTRATION PHOTO 


















In New England, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Indiana, Michigan, 
and other thickly populated States, the Resettlement Adminis¬ 
tration is buying areas of this kind, comprising several thou¬ 
sands acres each. Under the technical supervision of the Na¬ 
tional Park Service, trails, roads, cabins, and camping places 
will be built and made available for public use. The land se¬ 
lected for these projects lies in each case within 50 miles of a 
large industrial population. Their short distance from the 
cities will make it easy for people of limited means to use 
them. These regions now inaccessible to the public and virtu¬ 
ally useless will be made sources of pleasure and health for 
present and future generations. 

RURAL ZONING 

Obviously the Government cannot, and does not intend to, 
purchase all the lands which are being unwisely used. Great 
reliance must be placed on encouraging private landowners 
to improve their use of the land. States and counties must be 
helped in their efforts to husband our natural resources. “Land 
use planning” is the term applied to this work of devising 
means to better the use of land, whether privately or publicly 
owned. 

Rural zoning is one of the most effective methods of promot¬ 
ing the wise use of privately owned land. Just as in the cities 
zoning regulations prevent undesirable building, rural zoning 
can prevent land from being used in ways that result in public 
waste. 

This system has been best applied in Wisconsin where iso¬ 
lated settlers on unproductive land had for years been a great 
burden on the public revenues. Zoning ordinances, based on 
careful land-classification maps made by the State university, 
have been adopted by the counties in accordance with a State 
enabling act. Areas unsuited to farming are designated as re¬ 
stricted areas. They may be used for forestry, summer homes, 
hunting cabins, and the like. Rut no permanent settlement is 
allowed. This means that public expenditures on roads and 


28 




Resettlement Administration photo 


RECREATION AREA Thousands will play where these 
few farm families are now struggling with poor land. 










schools are much less than if there were families living there 
the year round. The Division of Land Utilization of the Re¬ 
settlement Administration is studying ways and means to apply 
this method of control in other States and problem areas. 

The States can also restrict the wasteful use of those lands 
which have reverted to them because of unpaid taxes. Prop¬ 
erties which have been seized in lieu of taxes are usually sold 
again as soon as possible, subjecting new families to vain effort 
and heartbreaking defeat, and adding to the burden of county 
and State finances. It is recognized as a better plan to sell only 
that land which will enable its settlers to become self-support¬ 
ing. The remainder can be held as public domain in the form 
of forest land or pasture. 

These are two ways the States are helping in the common 
task. It is recognized that our land can be conserved only by 
the cooperation of national and local authorities. Attached to 
the Division of Land Utilization are experts in land planning 
who consult with State agricultural and conservation officials, 
thus making certain that the interests of both State and Nation 
will be considered and the advantages of their combined experi¬ 
ence will be utilized. 


AN INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE 

The work of land improvement and of resettlement will yield 
immediate benefits. The removal from public revenues of an 
excessive burden, the relief of human distress, the new forests 
and grazing areas and parks will be of direct and tangible 
advantage to the whole country. 

But these immediate benefits are overshadowed by the im¬ 
mense importance of this work for the future. Its success will 
insure that our land shall always support our people and that 
a large part of our people shall always be able to live on the 
land. 

The funds that are being spent, the work that is being done, 
is above all an investment in the future happiness and welfare 
of America. 


30 


PLANNING Land classification maps, showing results 
of field examinations, are an aid to intelligent land use. 



Resettlement Administration photo 


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CAREFUL LAND USE MEANS CONSERVATION 
OF FOREST, WATERS, AND SCENIC BEAUTIES 













U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: I 










































































































































































































































